No one enjoys marking the start of new school year by dropping hundreds of dollars on textbooks. Rather than spend so much on expensive books, use the tips from this cheat sheet by Boundless to save money on textbooks! Check out the infographic below for 6 practical tips for getting all you need for class without breaking the bank.

We also asked students what they would do with the money they saved on textbooks from tips like these. Here’s how they responded:

Almost 50% of students said they would put that money toward tuition

18% said they’d use it for their housing expenses

Only 6% of students said they would use that money for fun activities like shopping or meals out with friends.

Technology is ubiquitous, and Google has the data to prove it. According to their 2012 survey “Digital & the New College Experience,” 74 percent of college students own smartphones, and 86 percent have supplemented their courses with free online resources. Many of those students — 47 percent, to be exact — share digital learning materials on social media sites at least weekly. The college landscape has changed dramatically in the past few years, and this survey unearthed some fascinating data.

Here’s a look at a few key points from the survey, which can be viewed in its entirety below.

College students don’t always buy textbooks, largely because of the high cost. E-textbooks and rental programs only partially solve this problem, since costs can still be high and some professors insist that textbook editions be current. So why do online students buy textbooks more often than traditional students do? The survey indicates that 60 percent of distance students always purchase textbooks, compared with 50 percent of students at private colleges and 43 percent at public colleges.

Perhaps the lack of in-person class time is an incentive to have a tangible learning resource, or maybe online learners are more engaged. Either way, textbooks are key to education, regardless of the medium or the class format. As the saturation of devices like tablets and e-readers increases, will more students purchase textbooks? Or will the easy access to free resources online further slow textbook purchases? According to Google, 42 percent of college students already own a tablet, and 30 percent of students plan to purchase a tablet in the next year. The landscape is changing quickly, and time is of the essence.

There may be enough information online so that students won’t need textbooks at all in the future. Google’s survey points out that almost all students use online resources to supplement classroom learning and textbook content. Sixty-two percent conduct online searches, 51 percent watch videos and 33 percent use message boards.

Educators may disagree about whether this has a positive impact on their courses, but the availability of information online is clearly a benefit to the students. The real question is whether professors can begin to do a better job of building supplemental resources into the courses.

Technology Makes Learning a Social Experience

Half of the college students surveyed have shared study materials online. The college experience has been social for years, but now the learning materials can be shared on the web. Again, educators may not want students swapping information, since it could take away from the learning experience, but this is the way the millennial generation uses the Internet. Message boards, chat rooms and email are not ideal for professors, because information quickly becomes decentralized and hard to track, but this is exactly how repositories of information are built today. Wikipedia, for example, could never have been created unless a multitude of web users contributed. All over the web, information is building up, creating useful resources for students. Social media is driving this phenomenon, and nearly every student access that enables them to contribute to or use the platform.

To say that technology is an important topic in higher education is an understatement. Technology is a broad subject, with different implications for students, professors, administrators and IT teams. Educators like to discuss the bells and whistles of classroom technology — tablets, digital textbooks, gamification and student response systems. But without the vital infrastructure, such as servers, access points and bandwidth, classroom technology would lack the components necessary for successful implementation.

And don’t forget about policy. As everyone in education knows, the devil is in the details. A bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program, for example, requires an understanding of the rules and relies on communication between faculty, students and the IT staff.

Technology is complicated, so educators need to be flexible as they tackle new initiatives and draft new policies. But staying on the cutting edge while investing in an infrastructure that must last for many years can be difficult. Jason Vaden addresses that challenge and highlights the importance of technology in his research paper A Model Assessment Tool for Classroom Technology Infrastructure in Higher Education:

Educators must be prepared to both understand and use classroom technologies to the fullest. Okojie and Olinzock (2006, 39) describe technology as a “nerve center” of our modern lifestyle. They (Okojie and Olinzock, 2006, 39) maintain that due to this, “we must make sure that teachers who have the responsibility of training our children to be productive members of this society are consciously aware of various technologies as they emerge and are also able to demonstrate their different uses to their students.” Hence, it is imperative that the benefits provided by technology are recognized and utilized to the fullest.